It reminds me a lot of the stuff coming out on Future Sound Of Egypt over the last few years (more old school atmospheric trance rather than the big room-esque style on Armada & played on ASOT) - which is good to see. As posts have said above the melody is strong, sound design good, and transitions / breakdown smooth.

It could be my monitors but my one comment would be that the drums and percussion (mainly kick, snare, hats) could cut through the mix a bit more. It works really really well as an ambient track but when I turn it up to get the kick and bass frequencies thumping this makes the high mids and highs very loud. Perhaps the limiter on the master channel is pushing these to a greater degree than the low frequencies.

I'm no expert (so could be completely wrong) - but perhaps by making the drums punchier before the master bus (some compression, saturation / distortion, transient shaping / enveloping, reverb etc), the limiter would have less impact on the balance. I suppose this would also be dealt with somewhat in professional mastering. It would be interesting to hear what others think.

On an arrangement level, perhaps bring the snare in after 8/16 bars (rather than at the beginning) just to create more interest and motion in the track?

A question, if you don't mind (given that the track is really solid). How much layering did you use on the various parts (pads, plucks, leads) and what synths? I'm a huge fan of trance music but every time I have tried producing it, it just kills my CPU with the various layering required. Similarly with the James Dymond tutorials on SA, the layering that he uses (4 pads, various plucks and leads) needs some serious processing power.

On that note check out James Dymond - Echoes, probably one of my favourite tunes over the last few years from that genre. He manages to create an atmospheric / ambient sound that is in no way big room, but with a really nice balance between the low end and high end (when you turn it up it still sounds balanced with less harsh high end). That's what I was trying to get at with the above comment :).

The thing is, once I finish the track, I rarely go back and re-arrange it. Regarding the sound, I'm used to listen on my monitors in my own environment, and it sounds ok, and I know that on yours or any others monitors it sounds different. Also because of the environment you are listening in. And yes, I was kinda lazy and didn't group all the drums and compress them.

Now, about the layering. In this case there was no synth or pad layering. Let me explain this. I only do it only when I need to; meaning, if I can't make the sound I want with one synth or sample, I'll proceed with layering. The only case I always do layering, is with the bass line; the sub part and the mid part.And yes, layering can be very demanding for you CPU, especially if you are using synths that produce a complex sound. I remember back when I had less powerful cpu, when I load 3 instances of Spire, my pc couldn't handle it, even though I've set the maximum buffer in ASIO4all settings. But now, I have a better cpu and these problems are gone.So, there are 3 things you can do to avoid cpu overloads: buy a better cpu, buy a good external sound card, or you can export (bounce in Logic) each synth or pad in wav separately (with processing), and then import it back into the project.

I have been using a heap of layering (maybe up to 20 synth tracks over the project), so its good to know that you have got that sound with minimal layering. Interesting to know that a sound card reduces CPU usage (I infrequently use mine and certainly have never thought of it in a CPU context) - you learn something new every day !

listening to it again after some time. still muy bien. reminds me so much of a record i bought in the 90s. my friends hated it,a bit like cafe del mar, it didn´t fit to anything in our collection but i loved it.